one of my recent GAS related problems is that now I'm not only obsessed with guitar gear but recording gear too, mics, preamps desks and audio related stuff. It's equally enticing and one must be careful not to let it suck you in! since reading this post though I have been improving my technique and playing more every time I feel the GAS creep in lol it's made me realise how much time I was wasting looking at gear e.t.c.
I have a similar problem with recording gear as I am a hobby sound tech, doing live and home studio things in varying dimensions (biggest thing I have mixed live had up to a few million hits on youtube on some tracks).
Thankfully I found something that cured me to a good part of the recording gear GAS. Imho the most important thing is a good pair of speakers or in my case headphones (Beyerdynamic DT880s do the trick for me) is the single most important thing. If the rest is not utter cr@p that is what you really need imho.
What makes me say this is Sufjan Stevens. He did a wonderful wondeful album called Illinois, which he recorded with a 32khz 8 track and a Shure SM57 and AKG C1000. Pretty low fi stuff actually...or affordable shall we call it. Still the result he got out of it blows my mind. The mixing work he did is masterful in my ears, especially for the gear used and of course his arrangement skills which are out of this world do a lot too.
Quick youtube example
http://youtu.be/pBMwwJMkcRAHe really made me determined to get all out of my gear I possibly can, which is a Steinberg UR28M, a Sennheiser E906 mic, an old Shure 545L which still has a jack out (love the sweet sound of this thing), a MXL V69 tube condenser which I modded and my Beyerdynamics DT880 headphones.
Since I had this little revelation I really got a lot more out of these.
I really donīt feel I need anything else right now, besides maybe some of the cheaper ADAM monitor speakers, but even that is not pressing.
This really is different to instrument and amp GAS since those influence your playing, but with recording gear you need good ears, skill and equipment you can work with, but that does not have to be expensive by any means.
Not to say that a super expensive Neumann mic is not amazing, it is and things like the high quality recorded "Peter Gabriel - Scratch my back" is glorious, but I personally really wanne master the low end first here. Maybe it stems from what I learned by doing live work, which is that it is important to make everything sound good, no matter how $%&#ed up the situation or gear is. Saw a lot of seemingly capable people fail on the low end...
